Robert R. Bowie, Richard H. Immerman. Waging Peace: How Eisenhower Shaped an Enduring
Cold War Strategy. New York and Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1998. x + 317 pp.
$49.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-506264-9.
Reviewed by Richard V. Damms (Department of History, Mississippi State University)
Published on H-USA (April, 1999)
Eisenhower’s Master Plan
The end of the cold war and the demise of the Soviet
Union has brought forth a wave of scholarship seeking
to explain how the United States and its allies engineered
victory. Here, the authors make the well-reasoned case
that Dwight D. Eisenhower deserves a share of the credit
for successfully crafting a winning strategy. In their
view, Eisenhower devised “the first coherent and sustainable cold war strategy” suitable for the basic conditions
that would prevail for the next three decades (p. 3). Although they accept that the Soviet collapse and peaceful resolution of the cold war owed much to the internal
problems of the Soviet system and the recognition by Soviet leaders of the need for reform, Eisenhower’s New
Look containment strategy nevertheless “provided the
indispensable external context for producing that outcome” (p. 258).
In the most original section of the book, the authors
detail Eisenhower’s and Dulles’s critiques of President
Harry S. Truman’s national security policies. Until 1950,
they argue, Eisenhower generally endorsed Truman’s
containment strategy and collective security policies. Indeed, as Army Chief of Staff, temporary chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), and then the first supreme allied commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces, Eisenhower had been a minor participant in many of the key national security debates of
the day and bore responsibility for implementing Truman’s policies. But the outbreak of the Korean War and
the adoption of the alarmist NSC 68, calling for an expanded military establishment, troubled Eisenhower. He
became increasingly concerned about the apparent disarray in Truman’s policymaking procedures and the longterm implications of an open-ended containment policy.
What was required, he believed, was a coherent strategic
concept based on “a realistic examination of threats, objectives and priorities, and an objective appraisal of the
means and support required to achieve them” (p. 42).
Truman’s team had failed to grasp that “the purpose of
America is to defend a way of life rather than merely
to defend property, homes, or lives” (p. 45). Based on
his own military experience, he had a healthy skepticism of dire intelligence assessments. He had also witnessed firsthand the devastation wrought on the Soviet
Union in World War II and believed that Soviet leaders
would not deliberately risk a similar conflagration that
might jeopardize their regime. If the United States and
its allies could carefully husband and exploit their re-
Authors Robert Bowie, former director of the Policy
Planning Staff in John Foster Dulles’s State Department,
and Richard Immerman, a self-confessed Eisenhower revisionist who has written and edited several important
works on Eisenhower and Dulles, have pooled their talents to produce the most meticulous study to date of the
formulation of Eisenhower’s basic national security policy between 1953 and 1954.[1] Based on thorough research primarily in the Eisenhower and Dulles papers,
and drawing on Bowie’s personal recollection of events
in the National Security Council (NSC) Planning Board,
the authors pay particular attention to the development
of NSC 162/2, the first comprehensive statement of the
new administration’s cold war strategy.
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sources, project an air of resolve, and maintain unity behind a long-term containment strategy, the Soviet system
would ultimately collapse under the weight of its own internal contradictions.
der to encourage his advisers to take a broader view of
national security, Eisenhower required each policy proposal to include a budgetary annex, and frequently invited the budget director and chairman of the Council of
Economic Advisors to join the treasury secretary in the
Dulles’s critique, meanwhile, derived from his varied NSC’s deliberations. Eisenhower, himself, presided over
diplomatic experiences and his study of philosophy. A
the weekly meetings and promoted freewheeling discusveteran of the Versailles peace conference and a student
sion. The authors make the now familiar argument that
of Henri Bergson, Dulles came to believe that change was Eisenhower devised Operation Solarium (the mid-1953
inherent in the international system and that enlight- exercise when administration officials staffed out three
ened statesmen had to make progressive adjustments and alternative strategies of continued containment, nuclear
promote global integration in order to preserve peace deterrence, and aggressive rollback) to foster consensus
and security. As the British and French had apparently
among his advisers for his preferred strategy of containfailed to learn this basic lesson, the onus was now on
ment.
the United States to champion peaceful change and mobilize the free world against the communist threat. Like
The last third of the book details the cold war stratEisenhower, he defined national security broadly to in- egy outlined in NSC 162/2, adopted in October 1953.
clude military strength, economic power, world opinion, Eisenhower explicitly rejected NSC 68’s designation of
and moral force. “Peace,” he wrote, “must be waged just 1954 as the “year of maximum danger” and its prescripas war is waged” (p. 65). In his view, the Truman ad- tion for coercing the rollback of Soviet power. Rather,
ministration had failed by focusing too narrowly on mil- he viewed the Soviet threat as a long-term one that
itary power, concentrating on Europe at the expense of would require a free world strategy sustainable by the
Asia and the developing world, and adopting a static con- United States and NATO over the “long haul.” The New
tainment strategy that preserved the status quo and frus- Look therefore stressed a return to the original contrated the legitimate aspirations of oppressed peoples. tainment concept, collective security, and increased reDulles advocated a dynamic policy of liberation, to be liance on nuclear weapons both to deter a general war
achieved primarily through propaganda and psychologi- and to allow economies in defense spending. It also encal warfare means, backed up by a more explicit emphasis dorsed a forward defense strategy for NATO, advocated
on nuclear weapons to deter general war. Such a strat- greater European cooperation and integration, and faegy would throw the Soviets on the defensive and has- vored measures to promote international trade and ecoten their demise. During the 1952 campaign, Eisenhower nomic growth. Dulles achieved his dynamic policy with
glossed over his fundamental disagreements with the iso- a commitment to “liberation” by peaceful means, prilationists in his own party by making few references to marily through stepped up psychological warfare efforts
foreign affairs and allowing Dulles to write the Republi- against the Sino-Soviet bloc, but both Eisenhower and
can foreign policy platform.
Dulles ruled out the more aggressive military rollback
plans contemplated by the JCS as being unnecessarily
In the second part of the study, the authors analyze provocative and dangerous. Finally, Eisenhower’s deep
Eisenhower’s policymaking procedures. “Eisenhower concern about the dangers inherent in the nuclear arms
believed that careful and integrated planning, systemrace led him to support limited arms control measures
atic exposure to diverse points of view and the broadthat might reduce the risk of war and ease the economic
est range of available information, methodical review, burden of armaments.
and effective teamwork and coordination were essential
Despite the new emphasis on balancing means and
for making policies that best serve the national interest”
(p. 256). To that end, he reorganized and reinvigorated ends, Eisenhower made clear that he would not sacrifice
the NSC. He established a Planning Board, composed of security for solvency. While endorsing the idea of a mathe chief planning officers in each department or agency, jor redeployment of ground forces from Europe and Asia
to draft policy statements for NSC discussion and presi- in principle, he agreed to postpone such moves indefidential approval and to identify “splits” between agen- nitely for the sake of maintaining allied cohesion. Simicies requiring resolution. He set up an Operations Co- larly, he refused to countenance the massive reductions
ordinating Board to ensure compliance with NSC deci- in foreign aid programs favored by Budget and Treasury
sions, and appointed a special assistant for national se- officials, arguing that they were a wise long-term incurity affairs to oversee the new bureaucracy. In or- vestment in national security. Indeed, in the developing
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world, NSC 162/2 committed the United States to pro- Readers interested in examining the New Look beyond
gressive change in order to short-circuit attempts by the 1954 might benefit >from Saki Dockrill’s more compreSoviets to capitalize on frustrated nationalist aspirations. hensive Eisenhower’s New Look National Security Policy,
1953-1961 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996).
Understandably, given the relatively narrow focus on
1953-54, the authors are overly generous in their assessThese reservations aside, Waging Peace provides the
ment of the New Look and its implications. As they occa- most sophisticated discussion of the genesis of Eisensionally acknowledge, the various provisions enshrined hower’s national security policy to date. While the
in NSC 162/2 could not always be reconciled in practice. authors’ conclusions regarding the ultimate wisdom of
Eisenhower authorized covert operations in Iran and Eisenhower’s New Look strategy remain open to debate,
Guatemala to achieve short-range objectives that clearly the book will become required reading for all students of
undermined reformist national aspirations in both coun- Eisenhower and the national security policymaking protries. These “successful” operations generated false confi- cess.
dence in the efficacy of covert action as a diplomatic tool.
Notes:
Operation AJAX begat Operation PBSUCCESS which begat the Bay of Pigs. Similarly, the same policymak[1]. See, for example, Richard H. Immerman, The CIA
ing procedures that the authors praise for airing diverse in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention (Austin:
opinions and generating consensus for presidential deci- University of Texas Press, 1982); idem, ed., John Fossions actually stymied Eisenhower’s arms control initia- ter Dulles and the Diplomacy of the Cold War (Princetives. Strong bureaucratic resistance by the Department ton: Princeton University Press, 1990); idem, “Confesof Defense, the JCS, and the Atomic Energy Commis- sions of an Eisenhower Revisionist: An Agonizing Reapsion consistently frustrated Eisenhower’s halting moves praisal,” Diplomatic History 14 (Summer 1990): 319-42;
toward even a limited nuclear test ban agreement. De- and idem, John Foster Dulles: Piety, Pragmatism, and
spite Eisenhower’s occasionally eloquent ruminations on Power in U.S. Foreign Policy (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly
the arms race and the horrors of nuclear war, moreover, Resources, 1999).
the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile mushroomed to some
Copyright (c) 1999 by H-Net, all rights reserved. This
18,000 warheads by the end of his presidency. To ascribe
this increase, as the authors seem to do, mainly to Tru- work may be copied for non-profit educational use if
man’s expansion of production facilities is disingenuous. proper credit is given to the author and the list. For other
permission, please contact [email protected].
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Citation: Richard V. Damms. Review of Bowie, Robert R.; Immerman, Richard H., Waging Peace: How Eisenhower
Shaped an Enduring Cold War Strategy. H-USA, H-Net Reviews. April, 1999.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=2992
Copyright © 1999 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for
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